Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl Critical Essays on Norms of Liberty

by Collins, Sue; Den Uyl, Douglas J.; England, Edwin; Fuller, Timothy; Grasso, Kenneth; Kline, William; Miller, Fred D., Jr.; Rasmussen, Douglas B.; Skoble, Aeon J.; Sternberg, Elaine; Sullivan, Denis; Taylor, James S.; Thomas, Charlotte; Thunder, David; Ved

• ISBN13: 9780739126929
• ISBN10: 073912692X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-06-19
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl's recent book Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (2005) is being received in philosophy and political theory as an important and original defense of liberalism. The book offers a neo-Aristotelian ethic of human flourishing as a basis for a liberal conception of human rights. One of the authors' central contentions is that a key problem for any (liberal) political philosophy is how to establish a political/legal order that in principle does not require that any one person or group's well-being be given structured preference over that of any other.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
An Introduction to Norms of Liberty	p. xi
Assessing the Prospects for Norms of Liberty	p. 1
A Liberal Defense of Liberalism	p. 13
Can the Political Priority of Liberty be Squared with the Ethical Priority of Flourishing?	p. 27
Building a Bridge from Both Sides: A Response to Norms of Liberty	p. 41
Beyond Both the Polis and the Enlightenment: Reflections on Norms of Liberty and the Crisis of Contemporary Liberal Theory	p. 59
A Non-"Atomist" Defense of Individual Liberty	p. 85
Aristotle and Aristotelianism in Norms of Liberty	p. 109
Moral Truth, Moral Disagreement, and the Agent-Relative Conception of Moral Value	p. 117
Reflections on Norms of Liberty: What Makes Liberty Worthy of the Name?	p. 133
Human Flourishing and Voluntarist Self-Direction	p. 141
Flourishing Through Trade	p. 149
Self-Directedness and the Human Good in Norms of Liberty	p. 165
Norms of Liberty: Challenges and Prospects	p. 177
Bibliography	p. 245
Index	p. 251
About the Editor and Contributors	p. 255
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